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The Three Witches or Weird Sisters are characters in William Shakespeare's play ''Macbeth'' (c. 1603–1607). Their origin lies in ''Holinshed's Chronicles'' (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland. Other possible sources, aside from Shakespeare's imagination itself, include British folklore, such contemporary treatises on witchcraft as King James VI of Scotland's Daemonologie, Scandinavian legends of the Norns, and ancient classical myths of the Fates: the Greek Moirai and the Roman Parcae. Productions of ''Macbeth'' began incorporating portions of Thomas Middleton's contemporaneous play, ''The Witch'', ''circa'' 1618, two years after Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare's witches are prophets who hail Macbeth, the general, early in the play, and prophesy his ascent to king. Upon killing the king and ascending the throne of Scotland, Macbeth hears them ambiguously prophesy his eventual downfall. The darkly contradictory witches, their "filthy" trappings and supernatural activities, all set an ominous tone for the play. Artists in the eighteenth century (''e.g.'', Henry Fuseli, William Rimmer) depicted the witches variously, as have many directors since. Some have exaggerated or sensationalized the hags, or have adapted them to different cultures, as in Orson Welles's rendition of the weird sisters as voodoo priestesses. Some film adaptations have cast the witches as such modern analogues as hippies on drugs, or goth schoolgirls. Their influence reaches the literary realm as well in such works as ''The Third Witch'' and the ''Harry Potter'' series. ==Origins== The name "weird sisters" is found in most modern editions of ''Macbeth.'' However, the first folio's text reads: :The weyward Sisters, hand in hand, :Posters of the Sea and Land... In later scenes in the first folio the witches are called "weyard," but never "weird." The modern appellation "weird sisters" derives from Holinshed's original Chronicles.〔Urmson, J. O. "Tate's 'Wayward Sisters'." Music & Letters 62.2 (1981): 245.〕 It should be noted however that modern English spelling was only starting to become fixed by Shakespeare's time and also that the word 'weird' (from Old English wyrd) had connotations beyond the common modern meaning. Shakespeare's principal source for the Three Witches is found in the account of King Duncan in Raphael Holinshed's history of Britain, ''The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland'' (1587). In Holinshed, the future King Macbeth of Scotland and his companion Banquo encounter "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world" who hail the men with glowing prophecies and then vanish "immediately out of their sight." Holinshed observes that "the common opinion was that these women were either the Weird Sisters, that is… the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science"〔Nicoll, Allardyce; Muir, Kenneth. "Shakespeare survey". Cambridge University Press, 2002. 4. ISBN 0-5215-2355-9〕 The concept of the Three Witches may have been influenced by the Old Norse skaldic poem ''Darraðarljóð'' (found in chapter 157 of ''Njáls saga''), in which twelve valkyries weave and choose who is to be slain at the Battle of Clontarf (fought outside Dublin in 1014).〔Simek (2007:57).〕 Shakespeare's creation of the Three Witches may also have been influenced by an anti-witchcraft law passed by King James nine years previously, a law that was to stay untouched for over 130 years, as well as folklore or simply his imagination. His characters' "chappy fingers," "skinny lips," and "beards," for example, are not found in Holinshed.〔 Macbeth's Hillock near Brodie, between Forres and Nairn in Scotland, has long been identified as the mythical meeting place of Macbeth and the witches.〔("Hail, Macbeth, savoiur of Scots tourism" ) ''The Scotsman, 7 October 2014〕〔Shaw (1882), p.173-174, p.218-219.〕 ((Map) ) Traditionally, Forres is believed to have been the home of both Duncan and Macbeth.〔Ayto, John et al. Brewer's Britain & Ireland. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. ISBN 9780304353859 pp. 435.〕 However, Samuel Coleridge Taylor proposed that the three weird sisters should be seen as ambiguous figures, never actually being called witches by themselves or other characters in the play. Moreover, they were depicted as more fair than foul both in Holinshed's account and in that of contemporary playgoer Simon Forman.〔Bate, Jonathan (The Case for the Folio ), pp 34-35〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Three Witches」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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